A MEETING IN THE WILDERNESS Beverley set out on his mid-winter journey to Kaskaskia with a tempest in his heart, and it was, perhaps, the storm's energy that gave him the courage to face undaunted and undoubting what his experience must have told him lay in his path.

He was young and strong; that meant a great deal; he had taken the desperate chances of Indian warfare many times before this, and the danger counted as nothing, save that it offered the possibility of preventing him from doing the one thing in life he now cared to do.

What meant suffering to him, if he could but rescue Alice?
And what were life should he fail to rescue her?
The old, old song hummed in his heart, every phrase of it distinct above the tumult of the storm.

Could cold and hunger, swollen streams, ravenous wild beasts and scalp-hunting savages baffle him?
No, there is no barrier that can hinder love.

He said this over and over to himself after his rencounter with the four Indian scouts on the Wabash.